The position of Guild Warden is a difficult one. Wardens
enforce Guild rules, laws and strictures on all members within a given area.
The Guild provides resources to its wardens in the form of scribes, assistants
and money. However a Warden must balance his zeal with the importance of maintaining
stability in an area. Abandon rose up through the ranks of the Guild through
slow, careful accrual of gains. In most ways he was unremarkable, save one. He
doggedly pursued back anyone who had cheated him even slightly in his trade. In
most cases, this was not intended to punish (unless he could), but instead to
send a message that this would not happen again. His pursuit of these matters
led him back to certain discrepancies in the current Guild Warden’s accounts,
which ended with that Warden’s death. Though he had not intended it, Guild
assigned Abandon to take his place. He has a reputation for careful and
contentious work, something which makes many people nervous. He has only held
the Warden position for a year and a half and it is unclear who is allied with
and against him.

Tepet Lindros, Master
of Ropes

Movement between the various quarters of Crux is a vital and
lucrative business. The King of Cascading Flowers reserves the ultimate right
to assign and regulate those who handle this vital matter. To administer this,
he appoints an officer, usually to a three year term, to make sure that
elevator operators, freight loaders, and stair wardens all handle themselves
properly and pay over a certain portion of their profits. The Master of Ropes
cannot be a member of the Guild and the King attempts to appoint someone with
solid social and financial status, to help maintain order. Currently, Tepet Lindros,
an unExalted member of his house, holds this office. Middle aged and wealthy
from investments in the kingdom, Lindros, handles the office in a workmanlike
way. His concern lies with anyone causing disruptions or creating noise that will
get back to the king. Operators understand that accidents will draw Lindros’
wrath, but they have a certain leeway in upkeep and fee charges. The Tepet is
coming close to the end of his term and many people are bucking for the
position. Most elevator operators and permanent franchises, at the discretion
of the Master of Ropes, but there are always a few spots that open up. By law,
only half of the elevator operations may be Guild controlled, by in practice,
nearly all are beholden to them in some way.

The Tilt: The bazaar and associated areas at the center of Day Quarter. (Place)

Tilted Bazaar: Great bazaar at the heart of Day Quarter. (Place)

Tonas Sabar, Master of
the Three Wisdoms Towers

Many nobles and patricians of Cascading Flowers Kingdom
employ private tutors and scholars to train their children, some few manage to
send their children to the Blessed Isle for primary education. While other
academies exist in the Threshold at Lookshy, The Lap and previously at Thorns,
the Kingdom itself has two notable places of secondary education. The first is
the Unimpeachable Fortress of Thoughts at Blossoming Pearl, essentially the Royal
Academy of the nation. The second, less famous and more harried school is the
Three Wisdoms Towers in Crux. Located in the Numina Gate district of the Day
Quarter, the school was originally three separate institutions, each led by a notable
philosopher, built next to one another to promote debate and competition. Over
the years, this mandate and the original principles of the three have fallen
away. The towers themselves have been surrounded at the base by a jumble of stone
and wooden buildings that make up the campus. A framework of iron and wood
connects the towers at their tops, making for passages and walkways students
must traverse to reach classes. These walkways are notoriously dangerous and
under constant repair.

Tonos Sabar, the venerable master of Three Wisdoms Towers, denies
these accusations along with most others. He is notable for his swift and deft
hand alternating between painful slaps and an iron headed cudgel to make his
point to lesser who would question the school’s works. He claims a second
cousin who serves as one of the great Merchant Princes of the Guild, but most
believe this is simply an accident of similar names that Tonas has laid claim
to. He takes a firm hand with those who approach the Towers seeking admittance
for their offspring, but is nauseatingly fawning when it comes to dealing with
the Dragon Blooded. Some few are taught here, the children of the least of the families
who either need short term schooling for their sons and daughters or else have
already had them expelled from real schools on the isle. These students have
free run of the place and use it to cower and control anyone else. Tonas has
heard the complaints and dismissed them, just as he dismisses accusations of
theft by his students from nearby businesses, the grumblings of the Watch as they
drag home drunken children on the weekends and the shouts of parents who arrive
to find their offspring missing and presumed lost somewhere in the interior of
the Towers. Despite all this, Tonas considers himself an educator and manages
to keep this image throughout Crux. Students continue to be sent there and will
be for some time.

Tower of
Feathers

Though a number of the more impressive
wonders of the city have fallen into disrepair or have been plundered for use
in other places, the Tower of Feathers remains, standing tall above all other
nearby buildings (even taller than the famed Karascend Bastion). Perhaps two
hundred hands tall, the tower has suites at the base, the mid-point and the
top. Interior elevators allow passengers to come up and down at specified
points in the day. At the base, the large open arched area shelters the famous
Chail Menagerie of Perfection, a seller of rare animals, including beasts of
the plains, fish of the sea and reptiles of the air. Chail specializes in
careful training and management for his creatures, but only sells animals small
enough to be lifted by a man. His grooming, cultivation of unusual interests
and clean establishment have earned him a reputation far beyond the Day
Quarter. On the other hand, atop the Tower, lies the House of Feathers. Here
Grand Spice Fortune, originally from Arjuf, sells rare and unusual birds.

Platforms reach out from the top of the tower and limbs and carefully crafted
scaffolding is used to house his hundredsome cages. The craftsmanship of these
cages is nearly as legendary as his birds. A trip, by appointment, to visit
Fortune is said to be a mixed experience, between the loveliness of the birds
and their songs and the vertiginous drops that the owner navigates through in
showing his potential clients a rare specimen.

The Underguilds

The Guild is a constant presence in the Threshold, rivaling
the Dragon Blooded for influence even in those areas under the control of the
Scarlet Empress. In times past, the Blessed Isle kept close watch on how and
when the Dynast families interacted with the Guild. Today, most of those restrictions
have vanished. More than ever, the Guild is the mercantile backbone of more and
more areas. In Crux, their influence has grown, though by charter, certain areas
and portions of certain commerce are held away from the Guild, to maintain some
balance. However, even in these cases money and a chain of influence means that
at the very least the Guild has some control of most operations. Often this is
for the better; the Guild maintains a system to check for quality, maintain
reasonable prices and to distribute goods across the regions it trades with. In
effect, most merchants must at the various least Guild a measure of approval
from the Guild or risk being frozen out.

Legitimate Guild representation in Crux includes the Guild
Warden, the Guild Factor . Nihlus Means, and a number of other posts. However a
second set of groups exist as well, known as the Underguilds. They call
themselves “fraternities,” “brotherhoods,” or “craft associations” but the Underguilds
carry out little traditional trade. Instead they are shadowy groups that extort
membership fees from those craftsmen and businesses that they believe fall
under their auspices. The sums they take are minimal, but yet another drain on
the pocket of the Guildsman. The Underguilds do provide some measure of return
payment in the form of directing people to their businesses, a minimal degree
of protection and in some cases an actual fraternity gathering for members. The
Guild and in particular the Guild Wardens recognize the existence of these elements
within the Guild itself and the reaction varies. For the most part, these
groups are small and benign enough that pursuing them is cost prohibitive, especially
since even the ring-leaders are Guild members. On occasion, however, an Underguild
oversteps its mark or engages in violent competition with another Underguild.
In these cases, the Guild will intervene.

It is believed that there are five or six Underguilds operating
in Crux. The most notable of these is the Merciful Company of Fletchers, run by
the Guild woman, Arexia Jadevine. This Underguild keeps itself in the open,
rather than carrying out secret club meetings and ceremonies. As a result it
has gained a certain degree of legitimacy that the other Underguilds lack. The
Guild Warden of Crux still keeps a close eye on Jadevine, which may be her actual
intent. Some say that by providing an open target, the activities of the other
Underguilds and their battles with the local guild of thieves can slip past.

Unimpeachable
Fortress of Thoughts: Secondary school at
Blossoming Pearl. (Place)